Paper short abstract:

The paper investigates situations of dementia and what it means to feel at home or not. It draws attention to affective relations and the precarious materiality of caring relations.

Paper long abstract:

Dementia unfolds human modes of existence that cannot be described merely as the effect of biological and mental deficits. Rather, it names the social estrangement of feeling-at-home with oneself and one's environment. The experience of dementia addresses modes of social existence that challenge the taken for granted normalcy of everyday practices as well as the institutionalized forms of care that try to deal with it. Thus, with the problem set out by dementia we are at the heart of the issues this panel tries to tackle: Feeling at home (or not).

In this presentation I will show and discuss sequences of an ethnographic film about Mrs M, a woman who has been diagnosed with AD and lives in nursing home. Marion Kainz's film 'The Day that got lost in a Hand Bag' alludes to the precarious relationship between temporal and spatial relations, i.e. the complex materialities at hand that play a crucial role in caring for and with dementia. The presentation will highlight that with dementia comes the question of affectivity and affective relations that needs to be cared for when we talk about 'care' and the 'materiality of care'. The engagement with these precarious materialities of care, so my argument, asks for an ethos of situated care which requires to be most attentive to these affective relations of everyday life - made and in the making.

Paper short abstract:

In this paper I want to develop a theoretical discussion on power and phenomenology. Central for my discussion is how people always have different ways of dwelling in the world. People are, to use Sara Ahmed’s metaphor, in line with their world. But not being in line can be problematic.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper I want to develop a theoretical discussion on power and phenomenology. Central for my discussion is how people always have different ways of dwelling in the world. People are, to use Sara Ahmed's metaphor, in line with their world. But not being in line with the dwelling that is sanctioned, ideal, or wanted can be problematic. I want to give some examples. It can be the wrong decorations in the garden, or that the children are too noisy in the backyard, or it is the car that is too expensive and exclusive in the neighbourhood. It may also be that the person is categorized as having the wrong skin colour, do not share the "same" culture, or is defined as an outsider among the insiders. From the following questions I want to develop this theoretical discussion: How can we theoretically understand the cultures that direct us in life and make us in line? How can we understand other peoples rejections when we are not in line? How can we study the creativity people use to become in line? And how can we understand the crisis that are connected too people that feel that they are never in line?

Paper short abstract:

Even though nursing homes are perceived as places where older persons “come to die”, thoughts about death and dying are seldom talked about. This paper explores how nursing assistants experience “dwelling near death”, and how they communicate about death and dying with the nursing home residents.

Paper long abstract:

The modern death is privatized and individualized, secluded to specific establishments such as hospitals and nursing homes. This means that the professionals of these establishments are given the role as experts on death and dying, and how to die well. The longing for authenticity and self-reflexion in modern society also creates certain expectations on death and dying, where the dying process is regarded as a revelation of the essence of human existence, with truthfulness and genuineness at its peak. Accordingly, dwelling near death means, amongst other things, to perform existential conversations. These conversations are expected to help the dying individual to prepare for death, to create a closing of what has been (life), and an opening to what is to come (death). This is regarded as essential in order to produce the good and dignified death. The expectations on the care professionals - in this case the nursing assistants - is to facilitate such expressions and insights by encouraging the residents to talk about their feelings and thoughts about death and dying.

Much of previous research is based on the professionals' narratives or rhetoric of their experiences, and less is known about how palliative care in older people's nursing homes is given in practice. Using an ethnographic approach based upon participant observations, this paper aims to explore how nursing assistants experience "dwelling near death", and how they respond to communication about death and dying with the nursing home residents.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the management of stand-up comedy performances from the combined perspective of phenomenology, gesture studies, and performance-oriented folkloristics. I will consider the implications of phenomenology for the study of gestures in staged oral performances, and vice versa.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the management of stand-up comedy performances from the combined perspective of phenomenology, gesture studies, and performance-oriented folkloristics. Stand-up comedy is a genre of oral performance that is structured around an emulation of spontaneous conversation in the present here-and-now. Prominently risk-laden in terms of interactional success, stand-up performances necessitate fluent rapport between performers and audience - the comics are expected to control and manage the room.

Gestures and movement are the primary (corporeal) devices through which comics manage the relationship with their audiences and surroundings. Gestures reflect and constitute representations of the spaces speakers inhabit and talk about, as well as mediate relations between various spatiotemporal frames (Haviland 2000, 47). Methodologically, gestures provide a central gateway onto a phenomenologically oriented performance analysis (e.g. Young 2011), while also shedding light on the dialogic and expressive nature of stand-up in general.

In my presentation I will consider the implications of phenomenology for the study of gestural communication in staged oral performances, and vice versa. In particular, I will explore how by mediating various viewpoints between the performer (the subject), the performed text (the object), and the audience, certain gestures, such as deictic "points" and iconic gestures, problematize perspectivism as a fundamental tenet of phenomenology.

REFERENCES

Haviland, John B. 2000: Pointing, gesture spaces, and mental maps. In David McNeill (ed.), Language and Gesture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Young, Katherine 2011. Gestures, Intercorporeity, and the Fate of Phenomenology in Folklore. Journal of American Folklore, 124(492), 55-87.

Paper short abstract:

Keeping the focus on the breath seems to be a golden rule for anyone who’s stressed out. With a phenomenological and ethnographic approach on mindful breathing practices in MBSR-Programms I explore how mindful breathing can be a way of „homing“ (Winther 2009) oneself no matter where you actually are.

Paper long abstract:

Not only since the i-Watch reminds one to breathe mindfully every 60 minutes, mindful breathing seems to reduce any kind of stress symptoms. Starting by a close-up of the breathing in guided meditation practice I'll show how the characteristics of breathing as a physical basic function are woven in a set of knowledge, beliefs, sensations and feelings.

Inspired by Ida Winther's concept of "homing" for the action that leads you to "a feeling of home, instead of looking at home as bound to a specific place", the presentation discusses along ethnographic data of breathing in popular guided meditation practices how they can be investigated in a phenomenological perspective (Merleau-Ponty 1966; Schmitz 2010). As an analytic tool it goes beyond interpretations that sense mindfulness as variation of individualistic self-improvement in (post)-modern time (Strasser 2016).

Mindful breathing is a practice that uses specific tools like meditation apps, structured language and narratives from buddhist mythology for reflecting between the impermanence and continuity, dynamics and stability as concepts of living. Even though breathing is happening by itself concentrate conscientiously on breathing focalizes on body and emotion, mind and space. The presentation emphasizes how the mindful breathing can be understood as a praxis of homing regardless where one is.